


Candy Break

by MysteryPines



Category: Joker (2019), Justice League - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Angst, Candy, Day After Halloween, Grumpy Bruce Wayne, Halloween, Heavy Start, M/M, People Pleaser Superboy, light ending, smarties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-18 11:10:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21275366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MysteryPines/pseuds/MysteryPines
Summary: Superboy tries to give Batman some Halloween candy. The Dark Knight wants none of it no matter how tempting it all seems. All the while he's trying to piece together what happened to Arthur Fleck.
Relationships: Light Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne
Comments: 1
Kudos: 44





	Candy Break

**Author's Note:**

> Even though I put the Superman/Batman pairing tag up for the story their relationship is mostly platonic with hints that it could become something more in the future. At the moment it's mainly a friendship with a happy-go-lucky Superboy with a moody teenaged Bruce Wayne.

Bruce sat in the bat-cave staring contemplatively at the monitors with his chin rested on top his interlocked fingers. He replayed a clip of Joker making his appearance on the Murray Franklin show. Analyzing every little action, every emotion the clown display during the entire scene before he fatally shot the show host in the head.

Bruce replays it ends once more.

Arthur Fleck.

This man, this _clown_, whose the reason for his parents' murders. Whose the reason why people from the lowest class, including copycat criminals from various classes over the years, don clown masks to set the city on fire and wrought chaos in every which way. Even when the incompetent Gotham Police Department managed to get the situation under control (somehow) nine years ago Joker's followers would create havoc here and there to make a statement or just for the shits and giggles. 

Last night on Halloween a group of these followers just so happened to have their icon with them while setting off fireworks (apparently trying to make a pumpkin shape in the sky) right next to an apartment building on the bad side of town. The building caught on fire causing an immediate evacuation. Most of the tenants got out in time, others weren't so lucky. But what makes this occasion so weird is there was a child who got stuck in the fiery destruction and Joker saved her as well as her pet turtle. 

Nobody saw the chaos begin, however channel 9 news with their impeccable timing caught the middle and end of it on tape. Part of that footage they inadvertently caught Joker in his heroic deed. Bruce had already seen the recording of it last night and watched it fifty times over to see if there was a particular motive. He had a conclusion that Joker somehow knew the child's mother. For after returning her daughter Joker seemed transfixed on her. He seemed sheepish, almost, just from being near her. He liked her, evidently, but she showed trepidation towards him, yet never once did she inch away from the madman. After some research of the building's residency it showed that Arthur Fleck and his mother, Penny Fleck (may she rest in peace), lived on the same floor as the woman, Sophie Dumond, and her daughter nearly a decade ago. Which could mean they were on an acquainted level with each other at some point but how much they knew of each other isn't quite clear. 

When Bruce deemed himself finished he had inserted additional notes he jotted down from the news clip into his computer's database and on a paper file backup he kept on Joker. There was nothing more to read into from the news of the apartment fire as he went back to reviewing the Murray Franklin tape he fought tooth and nail for several years back.

Whenever something new came about with Joker Bruce would be on the case faster than a Giselle running away from a lion. He couldn't help his obsession with finding out the causation of it all. Of this man, Arthur Fleck, the thorn in his side, the instigator of the domino effect that took his parents away from him, his mother, his only support when things went down hill with school and his father. The one who tore whatever childhood he had left from being the son of a bastard billionaire and robbed all of his attention from age eight to now.

Sad part about it all is Bruce doesn't _blame_ Joker for any of it. At least he doesn't any more. As he got older, Bruce realized that there were other factors that could have put a stop to or at least delay Arthur's transformation into the monster running around in Arkham Asylum today. Besides, Arthur isn't the one to pull the trigger on his parents even though he expressed great a distaste for his father, Thomas Wayne. He didn't blame Arthur for his animosity either because he understands _why_. It all just doesn't seem fair that his mother had to go down with his father once his sins have caught up with him.

But that day, when Arthur came to the front gates of the mansion...with his magic tricks with the wand and the flowers....the way Arthur smiled warmly at him. A genuine smile Bruce's own father rarely ever given him. It brings a dull, yearning ache in his heart. Slithering like a familiar serpent weighing in his chest every time the memory emerges from the depths of his troubled mind.

It's not fair. It's just not fair. It's not fair, it's not fair-

Closing his eyes, Bruce took a deep breath and slowly released. Leaning back in his chair he repeated the meditation to calm himself.

He had to keep his composure and continue with his work. Distraction cannot be afforded. Maybe he'll have a few bites of the oatmeal Alfred left for him but that is all that Bruce will be willing to-

"Good morning, Bruce!"

-spare.

Bruce's eyes widened in exasperate bewilderment.

As a teenager whom trained himself to expect the unexpected, he did _not_ expect to see that child today. 

The child in question? Clark Kent. Citizen and farm boy of Smallville, Kansas. Superboy, hero of Smallville, Kansas; enthusiastic, charming, kind, and thirteen years old.

Their situation is an odd one. A thirteen-year-old farm boy from Smallville hanging out with a rich brat of seventeen years in Gotham City certainly screams "sitcom premise" to an outsider. But even so, it all makes perfect sense to them. Even four years ago when Bruce was in the city parts of Smallville for business reasons when he was saved by Superboy, who was nine at the time, from a runaway ambulance. Bruce was _terrified_ by the raw strength in how metal of the grill bent easily underneath this child's hand. Yet he became enamored by the bravery Clark exhibited in the event. The concern and fear, not of what he's done but rather for _Bruce's safety_, shining brilliantly in his sky blue eyes. The sense of justice and desire to protect shone brightly in a person as out of place as this boy when he said, "Are you alright, Sir?"

In that moment, Bruce just _had_ to know who this Superboy was, what he is and how he operates. So naturally he tracked the boy down and found him at the Kent family farm. The whole Kent family were shocked that Bruce had figured out Clark's secret identity, especially since the farm boy only adopted the superhero persona just a week prior.

Bruce also felt that he was indebted to Clark and asked for their telephone number for the two boys to stay in contact. Clark's parents were baffled at first but relented.

This promise of a new friend had thrilled Clark immensely. Not from the fact that said new friend is rich or very pleasing on the eye. The idea of knowing somebody he didn't have to keep his identity from is a relief like no other. Clark couldn't help himself but make Bruce pinky promise they would be best friends. While reluctant, the benefits outweighed the minor supply of counterproductive inquiries in Bruce's mind and he agreed. He couldn't wait to see the man Clark would come to be.

And so they've been friends ever since that day. Bruce would come out of his cave to hang with Clark in exchange for Bruce to run tests and examinations on the younger's abilities. It was a fair trade in their opinions. That is up until Bruce gets on a roll with his research and wishes nothing then to kick Clark out of the Batcave if it didn't hurt his foot so much to do so.

Bruce was in one of those moods right now. And he did _not_ want to be bothered.

"Morning Kent," the heir to Wayne Industries mumbled.

He spared the superhero a side glance to see if he could deduce what Clark wanted. He stood gleefully at 5'6, over a foot taller than he was four years ago, with his red cape held in front of him with a pile of candy riding inside of it. No doubt Clark with his annoying generosity wanted to share some of it with him. While a kind gesture, Bruce doesn't really have much of a sweet tooth or interest in candy.

Bruce brought up an empty document file and started typing about the events of the previous night to make himself look busy. 

"Whatcha doing?" Clark brightly asks.

"What does it look like I'm doing," Bruce muttered.

Clark looks down at a tray containing a bowl of oatmeal topped with fruit before looking back up at the screen. Adjusting the cape full of candy onto one arm the farm boy reached out to touch the bowl. It was cold. Like it was just taken out of the refrigerator.

"You're working on the Joker case," sighed a disappointed Clark. "Again."

Bruce gave him an affirmative hum. 

"Baaah!" Clark exclaims. "That's all you ever do, Bruce! You just work, work, work. If it's not about the Joker then it's either homework or company work. Don't you ever take a break from all of that?"

"Do bathroom trips count?" the Almost-But-Not-Yet-Batman quirked an eyebrow. It was a genuine question, actually.

"No!" Clark stomped his foot on the ground causing the candy in his cape to bounce up in the air and neatly fall back into a pile once more. "You take paperwork into the bathroom with you! I know, I can hear it every time you do."

Bruce stops typing for a moment. Clark thinks he has the older teen until the typing starts up again.

"You're super-hearing is quite impeccable, you know that?" Bruce says as he closes the file with Joker info and opens up another file that apparently contains all the notes he's made over Clark's physiology and abilities. The billionaire teen then proceeds to type down what the younger teen had just told him.

Clark slaps his palm onto his forehead.

"You're unbelievable."

Bruce ignores the comment.

"C'mon Bruce," Clark tried harder to persuade his friend, "it won't kill you to take your eyes off the screen for five minutes, at least. I really scored last night after the fire! I save a few kids from falling debris who asked me if I'd gone trick-or-treating last night. I said 'no' and each gave me some of their candy!"

Bruce was dead set on just ignoring the Superboy until he left when something he said caught his attention. Scrunching his brows together, Bruce turned to look at the pile of candy then up at the country boy's face.

"You got all of that," the billionaire teen started, perplexed, "from a few trick-or-treaters?"

Clark's smile dropped into a vat of sheepishness. His light blue eyes shifted to the side to avoiding looking at his best friend's own peepers as he slowly says, "I may have said that to a few more people afterwards." When Bruce's expression dropped even further to one of disapproval, Clark was quick to add in, "But I wasn't going around guilt tripping people for candy! They kept asking, I would say I never got the chance to trick-or-treat and then they kept giving me candy even when I refused!"

Bruce sat there and stared at him. Willing a sense of uneasiness to settle into the fibers of Superboy's very being. Clark saw this and stood his ground starting right back at Bruce, trying best to resist a cold shiver from crawling up and down his spine.

Suddenly, with the swiftness of something that is so swift that I can't think of at the moment because I want to finish writing this stupid story and get it over with, before Bruce could even think about turning back to his monitor, Clark reaches into the candy bundle in his arm and pulls out a wrapper containing a short roll of sugary sweets.

"I've got Smartieees," Clark said in a sing-song tone.

_This_ time Bruce interest has been piqued. His expression went from grim to one of a sad dog perking up at the mention of 'bacon'.

Clark _knows_ he's got Bruce when the barely legal teenager tries to avert his attention towards the screen but didn't turn his head or body with it. Perfect.

"You know you want to," Clark had the audacity to wave the roll of Smarties in Bruce's face, taunting him.

With quick swipe of the hand, Bruce had snatched the Smarties from his friend's hand and tore into the wrapper popping three tablets into his mouth. Clark smiled brightly. Pleased that his Mr. Doom and Gloom had caved in.

"I also made sure to get you enough," Clark said as he rapidly picked out six of the Smarties out of the pile.

Bruce held his hand out for them, "Thank you, Clark. But you really shouldn't have gone through the-" he pauses in surprise. The younger teen had place a big, long kiss to his elder's cheek. Clark pulls back, a smacking sound resonating in the cave as he did so, smiling warmly.

"Take it easy on yourself big guy. I worry about you."

Two pairs of light blue, as bright as the sky, made a connection that neither one of them could describe. But if there was one word either one of them had to label it it would have been something along the lines of '_appreciation'_.

"Yeah," a dumbstruck Bruce Wayne could only sit there, his mouth slightly gaped. "Alright."

"Great!" Clark beamed brightly. "I'll put the others in your room!"

Then Superboy happily jumps into the air and flew off towards the stairway leading to Wayne Manor study. Bruce watched as his young friend left the cave. A hand subconsciously came up to touch the cheek the young superhero had passionately placed his smooth lips upon. It tingled with the sensation of heat spreading over them and with haste travels to the other side of his face.

Bruce's gaze stayed on the stone steps of the stairway for another moment before looking back at his monitor. He trapped the Smarties in between his tongue and the roof of his mouth, contemplative as he sucked on the tablets to avoid chewing them.

The cursor blinked on and off the screen patiently waiting for more information to be added. Anticipating for the dark haired teen to return to work on the documents. Building up data Bruce knows will be of great use in the future and could possibly help prevent any unnecessary disasters.

He just sat there, staring at the screen. The Smarties were completely dissolved in his mouth by now. Swallowing as he takes out a couple more to put them through the usual procedure, Bruce turns towards the stairway.

"Clark!" he called, his tone barely reaching a yell. 

Bruce counted three seconds before the young alien super-speeds back into the Batcave. That ever immortal smile present on Clark's slowly maturing face. "What's up?" he asks.

With a friendly smirk playing on his lips, Bruce rested his chin on a fist closed over the other Smarties. He was presented with one leg over the other as his other dark gloved hand held out the half empty wrapper towards the boy. "I can't finish these on my own," he said. "Mind helping a friend out?" 


End file.
